In China, a country obsessed with pandas and tea, it was only a matter of time before an entrepreneur managed to bring the two together.

In Sichuan, the heart of panda country, a Chinese businessman is marketing "panda poo tea" - green tea that has been fertilised with panda droppings. An Yanshi, 41, claims he has a patent on the idea and that he has collected five tons of droppings to carry out his plan.

"I have started growing the tea on around three acres of land," said Mr An. "The first harvest should be ready in the Spring."

He added that the tea would be rich in nutrients from the panda's excrement and entirely organic.

"I wanted to promote the idea that we should all turn our trash into treasure," he said. "This is a form of recycling.

All of China's land has become polluted by chemical fertilisers, and I want us to start using what nature gives us instead," he added.

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"This tea shows how man and nature are at one, and in fact the Chinese character for 'tea' is made up of the characters for 'man', 'grass' and 'woods', so tea is a perfect representation of how we should live in harmony with our surroundings."

Mr An has set the price of his tea at £22,000 a pound, making it potentially the most expensive tea in the world if he can find any buyers. For the money, tea lovers will also receive a special panda-shaped tea set and two of Mr An's paintings of pandas.

"That price is just for the first pick," he said. "The price will go down subsequently. But I only want to sell my tea to fellow nature-lovers. I do not want to sell the tea to those rich Chinese who eat sharks' fins and so on."

Mr An said he has not had any expressions of interest in the tea so far.

Pandas create some 20kg of droppings a day. In China's most famous panda visiting centre, picture frames and other souvenirs made from panda poo can be bought.

Last year, a Chinese sculptor also crafter a replica of the Venus di Milo from panda droppings.